Bittersweet end to regular season for Old Rochester

MATTAPOISETT — After failing to qualify for postseason play a year ago, Old Rochester finds itself back in the boys basketball tournament this year after compiling the school's best regular-season record in 20 years. For head coach Steve Carvalho, however, the achievement is bittersweet.

MATTAPOISETT — After failing to qualify for postseason play a year ago, Old Rochester finds itself back in the boys basketball tournament this year after compiling the school's best regular-season record in 20 years. For head coach Steve Carvalho, however, the achievement is bittersweet.

Carrying a 16-3 record into Swansea for the make-up of a Dec. 18 postponed game against Case on Sunday, the Bulldogs had a chance to equal the 17-3 regular-season record compiled by the 1992-93 Old Rochester team. More importantly, a win also would have assured Carvalho and company a share (with Wareham) of the South Coast Conference championship.

Instead, the Bulldogs were slapped with a pair of bitter losses — one dissolving a dream; the other creating a nightmare.

"It was a couple of bitter pills to swallow," Carvalho said, two days after the 62-58 loss to the Cardinals. The loss was bad enough. But the ejection of a key starting player was still hard for the coach to accept.

Early in the second quarter, following what was described as a scrum near the Cardinals bench, Case guard Sam Horowitz shoved Old Rochester's Paul Graves from behind after the two had battled for a loose ball seconds before. That's when referee Mike Borden stepped in, calling a double technical foul and ejecting both players.

Carvalho admitted the game had been a little chippy and that a technical foul had been called against another Old Rochester player earlier in the game. The coach also said that Borden had warned both benches, but insisted the official had said nothing to him.

"The push (by Horowicz) was definitely a flagrant foul, but I didn't see anything that would merit the ejection of players," Carvalho said. As a result of the ejection, both players were assessed an automatic one-game suspension by the MIAA, meaning Horowicz wasn't allowed to play in Tuesday night's scheduled regular-season finale at home against Somerset-Berkley while Graves would be forced to miss the first game of the tournament since Old Rochester had already wrapped up its regular season.

"The tough part about this is that there is no appeal process for ejections," Carvalho said. "Not having Paul for the first tournament game is a big loss, but I feel worse for him. He's never had a technical foul called on him in his four years in the program and he's everything you'd want your own son to be."

The 6-foot-3 senior ended the regular season as the team's second leading scorer, averaging 10.8 points a game and led the team in 3-point field goals with 27. He's also one of the stronger defensive players in the South Coast Conference.

Pairings for the tournament will be available sometime Friday afternoon and will be announced in Saturday's newspaper. Old Rochester is likely to make its postseason debut early next week with a home game.